It looks like a lunar landscape but this remarkable photograph actually shows our Milky Way and the planet Jupiter in all their glory – viewed from a cave in America’s Utah desert.
The spiral galaxy, which cannot be seen with the naked eye, was captured by photographer Wally Pacholka using a 35mm camera and 50mm lens on a tripod with a 30-second exposure – long enough to collect the light but not to see the stars moving. He said: ‘I had to drive 800 miles each way five times to get the shot right. And I had to hike two miles to the cave and back again at night, getting lost each time I came out.’ His photo shows the Milky Way – estimated to be 100,000 light years in diameter and 1,000 light years deep – and Jupiter (to the top left), the biggest planet in the solar system with a diameter 11 times that of Earth’s.
fake
Stunning.
Here is a bigger version of this pic:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080929.html
Here is another great pic caught be acident:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap081011.html
Proves that GOD Exists!
Yes, the Milky Way can be seen with the naked eye. It used to be easy. Unfortunately there’s much more light pollution now than when I was a teenager, so it’s harder to see now.
Drive or hike to an area where there’s little or no light pollution. That is, somewhere far away from any town, (which often means somewhere in the rural West).
Choose a night when the sky is clear and Sagittarius and Scorpio (which are in front of the Galactic Center of the Milky Way) are going to be in the sky. Set up camp or lawn chairs for comfortable viewing, maybe with binoculars. Leave no flashlights or car lights on. Wait for about an hour or two after twilight and be patient.
I’ve seen the Milky Way in Indiana on a clear night at a rural Boy Scout camp (though this was in 1970 or so when skies were darker), and in New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona.
After all the work he did to capture the picture, you would think he would have realized the photo is crooked.
Montanaguy – You’re a complete idiot!
Not a fake. This guy is a real professional astro photographer with an impressive resume. I don’t know him but I think he would be highly insulted at someone calling his work fake. All it takes to get a shot like this is incredible vision and determination. A heap of talent also helps.
I see the Milky Way every night if there are no clouds. I was up in the mountains most mornings this month with my bow, hunting elk. But it does not light up the inside of a deep cave in an exposure this short. I’m calling b.s. on this manipulated scene.
Montanaguy, all you had to do was read the caption where it said: “The cave was briefly lit by flashlight during the long exposure.”
Using a light source to light up a large, dark object during long nighttime exposures is a very common photography technique.
#8
Thanks for your input, Grass4:
I’m apparently not the only one who is suspect of this guys work – google: “wally Pacholka” fake
30 seconds is plenty of exposure time to make the cave look illuminated. The cave is not being illuminated by the light cast from the Milky Way but by ambient light cast from all the stars combined and a crescent moon (which is out of view, follow the link for the information about the picture). Quite easy to do with any modern dSLR camera.
Wow! What a view! If you act quickly, you can get affordable option-ARM financing on these incredible view-caves in this wonderful gated community when you put down a small deposit now. And the caveowners association provides many worthwhile amenities, including communal barbecue pits with perpetually maintained fire for cooking a fresh kill day or night.
I see the potential for a disastrous cave-bubble.
Having camped in Canyonlands several times, well away from the only light polluting source (Moab), it indeed takes on a surreal look at night.
#10
Where did you see anything about a flash or flashlight? It’s not in this caption or in the link given.
(my)Example of similar exposure for another night sky object. Tents are illuminated by the lights inside, the rest is just natural outdoor light at about midnight in Alaska …
http://www.photrade.com/singlePhoto.php?photo_id=108157
By the way, I think MW image was not captured by the DSLR but the old tech film… Not so easy to do this with most modern DSLRs (possible with some top of the line recent models DSLR).
I was on a farm in New Zealand and there was no moon out. I could read the newspaper from the starlight of the milky way. Had to squint, but it was doable. Smelled good to even with the sheep all around.
Wow… read the photographer’s brief bio
http://tinyurl.com/4v5ndp
He is well recognized for his photography skills of the sky.
Sounds like someone I’d love to learn from.
It’s a composite, not a picture made in a camera. How remarkable are special effects? Pretty, but not without their counter-remarkable qualities.
Notice how the horizon of earthbound features is actually lighter than the sky that is mated to it. As if atmospheric haze only adds to photons bouncing off of rocks, not photons that came from the distant atmosphere.
This is not to say that Mr Pacholka didn’t take both images, but it clearly demonstrates that he is not incapable of photographic …mmm… fudging the story. It wasn’t “the shot.” It was “them shots.”
Here’s a similar shot from my own hand:
http://www.digitalsecrets.net/secrets/NatureSecret.html
I want to mention, as the guy from New Zealand did, that on a clear moonless night away from light, the stars are bright enough that you can almost read by them. I’ve done a lot of blue-water sailing hundreds of miles from land. And on a clear night the view is breathtaking.
After the Northridge Earthquake hit LA, many people noticed the that night sky seemed unusually “alive” and vivid. It was almost like nature was responding to the earthquake. The reality was simply that the earthquake knocked out the power grid, and the residents of LA were able to see the stars for the first time.
I set my cheap Cannon camera, I set the Exposure to 1min and took a shot in a pitch black dark, and turn out that it can see pretty good in the dark.
#20. “I’ve done a lot of blue-water sailing hundreds of miles from land. And on a clear night the view is breathtaking.”
Same here, it’s unbelievable at sea.
Actually, you can see the Milky Way with your own eyes if you are somewhere where there is little to no light pollution anywhere near you. A few hundred years ago almost everyone would have seen it in the sky at night. Now you have to be in the middle of a large desert / unpopulated area to see it.
Beautiful photo, however he made it.
It’s even more spectacular from Australia in the middle out in the desert!
An entirely different view of the sky! Well worth the trip just for that alone!
It looks 3 dimensional you can almost reach out and touch the stars!
Another thing, Do you really think we really are ‘alone’ in all of this?
I think the odds are that we are not.
#15 Montanaguy, it is in the caption at:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080929.html
“‘I had to drive 800 miles each way five times to get the shot right. And I had to hike two miles to the cave and back again at night, getting lost each time I came out.’”
Good pic but really, get a hand held GPS.
#24: “Beautiful photo, however he made it.”
Let’s be more precise. The Astronomy Picture of the Day site calls it a single exposure, but the image’s own attributes argue against that description. The distant mesas or buttes are washed out, as in atmospherically contrast-lowered. That effect is over only the stoney horizon skyline and as the ground image goes deeper, the haze gets more serious. The sky itself has zero effect of atmosphere.
Excuse me? How does that happen in physics? It’s a composite.
Even under partial moonlit circumstances, this haze effect would build up in the sky to some recordable degree, too. But the sky AT the horizon is as clear and contrasty as the sky at 30 degrees up.
One would better call this a beautiful illustration or picture. But not a “single exposure image spectacular” photo. The Astronomy Picture Of The Day folks have been either given inaccurate caption data or something was invented.
More “proof.” Maybe.
Here’s a shot made in late daylight from within feet of the Pacholca tripod location by Jason Corneveaux:
http://www.corneveaux.com/gallery2/v/canyonlands/False_Kiva.jpg.html?g2_jsWarning=true
Trees atop the mesa arm at the right. They should have shown in silhouette in the Pacholca image. From the look of them, they’ve been there for decades, not months, meaning they should be small details in the night shot, too. If nothing else at least a smudge against the sky at that spot.
But they were too hard to manually convert into matte elements. The largest web image of Pacholca’s contains not a whiff of them.
What might Mr. Pacholca’s motive be to call this image something it is not? Hubris? Sales?
I don’t know. But I call it an illustration, not a photo.